Oh, to be famous and travel the globe performing! Sounds so thrilling. And it was a thrill ride for the universally acclaimed Alicia Markova, but not one most people would sign up for. International ballet tours in the 1940s were far more grueling than glamorous, often involving dangerous locales, ghastly heat and humidity, and warped stages with gaping holes.

For Markova, it was all an adventure. She would become the most widely traveled dancer of her generation – often under her own steam, without monetary or management support from a major company – willing to sacrifice comfort and security in order to bring ballet to everyday people everywhere.

Dance rehearsals in extreme heat were not for the faint of heart. (Photo by Gordon Anthony.)

Easy this was not, especially in tropical heat. For anyone suffering through a scorching August day, picture having to wear tights, a multi-layered tutu, and dance for two hours!

And that was often just the beginning of a dancer’s trials. Take Markova’s first trip to South America, where temperatures could reach 120 degrees and air-conditioning in theaters was unheard of. It was 1940 and she had the good fortune to be co-starring at the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo with her best friend, the vivacious prima ballerina Alexandra Danilova.

Alexandra Danilova made grueling tours fun for her pal Markova.

After completing an arduous cross-country US tour in New York, the company was preparing for their international booking when a doctor arrived at rehearsal to administer vaccinations.

Artistic director Léonide Massine insisted that needles go into the dancers’ left legs rather than arms, so if any unsightly skin reaction erupted, tights would provide cover. Markova disagreed, as she had experienced problems with shots in the past and her legs were her livelihood. Massine won the argument. From The Making of Markova:

Danilova and Markova were booked in a “first class” cabin, which they soon discovered was “the size of an average broom cupboard.” The close quarters would seem even more so as the boat went farther and farther south and the weather got increasingly hot and humid.

Danilova and Massine rehearsed while Markova was immobilized with her painful left leg.

About ten days into the trip, Markova’s leg began to swell, eventually ballooning to twice its normal size. The ship’s doctor insisted that she lie still the entire trip with her leg elevated while he attempted to treat the inflammation with various dressings. But the swelling only got worse, hardened and eventually went numb. “I had a left wooden leg. It was like a piano leg,” Markova remembered.

. . . As the ship got closer to landing in Rio de Janeiro, a long list of warnings was issued to the company prior to disembarking. Markova’s stiff leg seemed to pale in comparison. Drinking plenty of bottled water with salt tablets was standard enough advice, but they were also told to avoid alcohol at bars, as local café glasses were known to spread syphilis of the mouth. If that wasn’t dismaying enough, the pretty young corps members were cautioned never to go out alone, as white slavery was a thriving business. Welcome to Rio!

. . . There was just one day to practice before opening night when Markova was scheduled to perform an excerpt from Swan Lake. Wouldn’t you know – that particular scene was danced almost entirely on the left leg. “[T]he heat was agony,” she remembered quite clearly. “I suffered really quite a few days after we were there with that leg.” Though the tights masked her wound, they only made her feel hotter.

The rest of the company wasn’t faring much better. Despite all the health warnings, one after another the dancers fell ill from dysentery, heat prostration, and various other ailments. . . . One evening Markova had to dance the demanding leads in two lengthy ballets and, upon leaving the stage after the final curtain, fainted from exhaustion in the wings.

Dolin and Markova had as much luck fishing in Cuba as they did dancing on a horribly warped stage. At least they had time for lunch with Ernest Hemingway.

Bigger problems than intense heat awaited Markova when she returned to Central and South America in 1947, this time with her Markova-Dolin Company co-founded with longtime partner – and fellow Brit – Anton Dolin.

Again, from The Making of Markova: In Bogota, the British consulate left word that the company was not to leave the hotel, as “there is going to be shooting today.” Only one matinee and evening performance were cancelled. Apparently they were all done shooting the next morning. A sudden revolution also prevented Markova and her partner Anton Dolin from a quick stopover in Nicaragua to dine with an old friend. “So we missed luncheon and the possibility of a bullet in the hors d’oeuvre,” Markova humorously recalled.

The stage was in such bad shape in Cuba, Markova feared her “Dying Swan” might literally live up to its name.

But it was in Cuba that Markova danced on the worst stage of her career – and that’s saying something. She had already maneuvered around holes, slippery marble, sharp tilts, and squished flowers, but the Cuban floorboards were a veritable roller coaster. Due to the incessant heat and humidity, the wood was so warped that it looked more like a Mediterranean tile roof than flooring.

When it came to her personal wardrobe, Markova quickly learned how to pack light and deal with extreme heat while touring. Shopping trips with celebrated modern artist Marc Chagall and his wife proved especially fruitful. The three were in Mexico City in 1942 preparing for Massine’s new ballet Aleko. Commissioned to create the sets and costumes, Chagall produced such astonishingly beautiful designs that they were applauded as loudly as the dancing. (To view those remarkable designs, see my former post “The Colorful Marc Chagall.”) From The Making of Markova:

Perhaps inspired by her Giselle costumes, Markova had lightweight peasant blouses and dresses designed for tours in extreme heat.

“I used to go to the market with Chagall often, and in Mexico at that time, it was very primitive,” Markova later recalled. “You could go to the market and buy all the wonderful cotton materials, and they were all dyed – by the Indians you see – in these fantastic colors. Well, they were almost psychedelic colors: the marvelous candy pinks, and yellow, and oranges. You could choose your materials and choose the lace and everything, and the braids, and design your own, what you had in mind, and then you brought it and you took it to the other end of the market.”

There a “little lady in black” sat at a Singer sewing machine and Markova would show her what she had brought and present her design ideas. Since the fabrics were so cool and lightweight, the ballerina thought them ideal to wear while on tour in stifling climates.

Rather than shop for themselves, the Chagalls used the outdoor marketplace as an inspiration laboratory for costume design; and they too would buy fabrics, intricately cut lace, and decorative trim for the elderly seamstress to stitch up to specifications. (Of course, it was Chagall’s hand painting on the fabrics that made the costumes true works of art.)

The tortuous moves in Aleko combined with extreme heat did Markova in.

When the company later performed Aleko in Los Angeles in July of ’43, the lightweight costumes proved little salvation in oppressive weather conditions. “Dancing in the humid air five nights a week, after rehearsing through a hot, sunny day at the Hollywood Bowl, or in one of the airless dance studios, was having its effect,” recalled Anton Dolin. Even more of an issue was Massine’s diabolically difficult choreography which had felled several dancers in rehearsals. The afternoon of the Hollywood premiere, Markova so severely pulled a muscle that she passed out cold; but with a sold-out crowd of 35,000 for opening night, she had no choice but to go on.

An amazing 35,000 people turned out to watch Markova perform at the Hollywood Bowl in 1943.

From The Making of Markova: The program went on as scheduled and Markova gave her normally fiery performance until almost the end of the ballet. Suddenly she felt a stabbing pain that she just couldn’t dance through and dropped to the stage. Co-star Hugh Laing immediately carried her into the wings and an ambulance was called. Another ballerina quickly took Markova’s place to finish the ballet, which at that point, required only that she be stabbed to death by Laing’s Aleko. But the audience barely paid attention. They were all murmuring about what had happened to Markova.

She would be out of commission for the rest of the summer.

Markova and Dolin made the arduous journey to the Philippines after the war.

By the time Markova and Dolin flew to the bombed-out Philippines in ’48 – a journey so daunting the pair were the only two dancers on the trip – she was an experienced packer for all kinds of weather. Even so, a surprise awaited her in Hawaii – a mid-point booking scheduled to break up the lengthy trip. (In those days it took 4 days just to fly from Hawaii to Manilla!) Despite all her preparations for the tropics, Markova was shocked at how much her feet swelled from the combined heat and humidity. She could barely fit into her ballet shoes. Worse still, the blocking in the toe turned to complete mush. From The Making of Markova:

A panicked telegram was immediately dispatched to Capezio in New York, where all of Markova’s ballet shoes were hand-made, requesting that the company quickly send a dozen new pairs a half-size larger, lighter weight, and with sturdier toe blocks. The shipment arrived well before the departure for the Philippines. Never again would Markova attempt such a trip without a supply of what she now called her “tropical” toe shoes.

The beautiful native Manila costumes worn by the two dancers sharply contrast with the wartime building devastation behind them.

[Awaiting Markova and Dolin in the Philippines was unimaginable devastation: miles of strewn rubble, bombed-out buildings, and a strong military presence.] First on the agenda was checking into the Manilla hotel – or half a hotel, as it turned out. “I remember opening a door next to my suite, which led directly and terrifyingly on to nothingness; the rest of the building had been sheared away by bombing,” Markova wrote in her memoirs. At the hotel’s front desk was the sign PARK YOUR FIRE-ARMS HERE – a none-too-reassuring reminder of daily shootings.

[It hardly mattered. The Filipinos could not have been more gracious or appreciative that the famous dancers had made the dangerous, arduous trip. No dance company had visited the Philippines since Anna Pavlova in 1924, and huge crowds gathered for every performance, many in outdoor fields in the middle of nowhere.] When Markova arrived in Cebu, she was taken to the barren outdoor cinema where she and Dolin would dance that evening. The locals were transforming the site right before their eyes.

When Markova stood on one toe, Filipino audiences gasped in amazement.

For a stage, dozens of upturned lemonade cases were lashed together and covered with a canvas. Off to one side sat a group of Filipino women, who one by one were cutting open old military grain sacks. The flattened fabric was then stitched together and painstakingly decorated with hundreds of wild tuberoses. It was a unique and quite beautiful backdrop. On the other side of the makeshift stage were placed several drained gasoline drums, now filled with fragrant flowers. The scent was so overwhelming, Markova remembered, as if someone had spilled bottles of expensive perfume everywhere.

. . . The entire audience was hypnotized. Every time Markova rose up on her toes, there was an audible gasp. No one could imagine how that was humanly possible. The rapturous reception was the same all over the Philippines, bringing as much joy to the dancers as the worshipful crowds. [For the story of Markova’s performing on another unusual stage in Manila, see my former post “Ballet in a Boxing Ring? It was a knockout!”]

While on tour, Markova loved visiting local ballet schools, as here in Manila, to encourage her passion for dance.

Markova and Dolin also made time to visit one of the local ballet teachers, helping her to develop easy-to-master lesson plans for her newly star-struck dance students.

Before the trip, Dolin wasn’t initially keen on such a grueling journey, but Markova talked him into it. “Whenever people say to me, ‘Oh, you can’t go to a certain place because there is no theater there or there isn’t any public,’ I would always say to Pat [Dolin], that’s where we’re going because it must be opened up.”

Matisse began experimenting with cut-outs when designing for the ballet.

“There are no second acts in American lives,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fortunately, celebrated artist Henri Matisse was French. Wheelchair bound after debilitating stomach cancer surgery in 1941, the 72-year-old picked up a pair of scissors and never looked back.

“I came within a hair’s breadth of dying,” Matisse told Swiss art critic Pierre Courthion at the time. “Long live joy . . . and french fries!” (You can read the entire fascinating interview in a recently released book from Getty Publications.)

Matisse’s paper cut-out designs for Léonide Massine’s Rouge et Noir

That new lease on life led to a jubilant new art form, currently on view in the exhilarating exhibit Matisse Cut-Outs at London’s Tate Modern (moving on to New York’s MOMA in October). “Bold, exuberant and often large in scale, the cut-outs have an engaging simplicity coupled with incredible creative sophistication,” the Tate makes clear.

Matisse pinning cutouts on Markova!

Matisse had actually begun experimenting with painted paper cutouts just prior to his illness while working on the Barnes Foundation “Dance” mural and a Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo production called Rouge et Noir, which, incidentally, premiered 75 years ago this month. Choreographed by Léonide Massine, the work was a dramatic allegorical ballet set to Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Symphony. Matisse’s new use of cut-outs would become integral to the design, begun in 1938.Matisse went so far as to pin cutout shapes directly onto Massine’s star ballerina – Alicia Markova!

Massine was mulling over Rouge et Noir when he made one of his frequent visits to Matisse’s studio. Off in the corner were the artist’s “Dance” mural mock-ups for the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania. From the Making of Markova:

Matisse’s mural for the Barnes Foundation

Massine recalled, “I pointed out to him [Matisse] that they were very similar in conception to the ballet I was planning, which I visualized as a vast mural in motion, he became suddenly very interested.”

Arched set for Rouge et Noir

The high vaulted arches would become the formative background element in the backdrops for Rouge et Noir.

Matisse then produced a series of boldly colored mockups of his proposed set and costume designs by combining gouache and cut paper shapes painstakingly adjusted until perfect, then thumbtacked in place.

Matisse’s “signed” Rouge et Noir front curtain

Massine was so taken with Matisse’s work on the ballet that he had the artist boldly sign his name in large black lettering on the Rouge et Noir front curtain. The choreographer wanted the audience to know, even before the ballet began, who was responsible for the awe-inspiring design.

According to Grace Robert in The Borzoi Book of Ballets: “The most exciting feature of Rouge et Noir [briefly called L’Etrange Farandole]is the décor by Henri Matisse. The setting consists of a backdrop and several flat arches painted in primary colors, in front of which dancers dressed in suits of fleshings in red, blue, yellow, and black, with headdresses that covered their hair (with the most important group, including Man and Woman, in white), ebbed and flowed in changing patterns. It was extraordinarily effective scenically . . . The groups formed and came apart, making wonderful blocks of color like an abstract painting set in motion.”

Matisse sketch for “cut-out” ballet costumes

Markova as “Woman” with Andre Eglevsky as “Man” in Rouge et Noir

As I explained in The Making of Markova:Once again the themes were monumental: man and woman battling the spiritual and material worlds, with current political overtones. There was also a battle between Massine and his dancers, as his choreography was tremendously difficult (and often physically painful) to master. “On the call-board the first day, were three names – Theilade, Slavenska, Markova,” wrote dance critic Mary Mack of The Music News. “As the work progressed, two names were dropped, Markova remained.”

In discussing the process of learning new choreography, Markova confessed. ”I’ve rehearsed for a new ballet and haven’t been able to walk for two days.” She used Massine’s Rouge et Noir as a case in point:

photo by Maurice Seymour

“He decided he wanted to blend the classical technique with [Isadora] Duncan from the waist up, with acrobatics and some [Martha] Graham. That’s what I had to reproduce for him. The first day my legs were black and blue. I had two large black marks on my hips.

The second day, since my leggings had been splintered whenever I hit the wood floor, I came back wearing linen slacks. For the whole of the rehearsal for the ballet Rouge et Noir, I used to put cotton wool to pad my hip bones. I had kneecaps on, and I used to put a pair of linen slacks over the lot. I was well upholstered!

When it came time for the performance, all I had on was just white silk tights all over, no padding. I learned by that time where to put the strength, how to try to get the most effect and save myself. But even then, I used to have pads in the dressing room with witch hazel when I came off. There again, you see, I was willing to be bruised black and blue for Massine to achieve choreographically something superb. Now there were many dancers in the company who wouldn’t do it. This isn’t really fair.”

Matisse’s cut-outs added poetry to her movements.

Markova brought Matisse’s dance cut-outs to life.

Grace Robert certainly felt Markova’s efforts were worth it: “As long as Alicia Markova was Woman, Rouge et Noir had a strong emotional impact. A very abstraction of womanhood, yet she wrung the heart with her magnificently understated agony in the face of loss and adversity – a symbol and precursor of the hell that was already breaking out in Europe, to spread all over the world. As she was succeeded in this role by a dancer of considerably less (to put it charitably) artistic stature, Rouge et Noir lost any interest except as a piece of stage decoration.” But what a stage decoration!

Matisse & Massine first met at the Ballets Russes in 1919.

Rouge et Noir was not the first time Massine and Matisse had collaborated on a ballet. In 1919 the two met at the famed Ballets Russes, where the unimaginably persuasive Serge Diaghilev talked a reluctant Matisse into designing Massine’s production of Le Chant du Rossignol(The Song of the Nightingale), with music by Igor Stravinsky. Though his rival Picasso had been working on sets and costumes with Diaghilev for years, Matisse didn’t want to take time away from his painting. “But I’ll only do one ballet and it’ll be an experiment for me,” he would later explain to Pierre Courthion. “And so I learned what a stage set could be. I learned that you could think of it as a picture with colors that move.

“These colors are costumes. The colors move, but they mustn’t alter the expression conveyed by the set. They must be subordinated to a single grand expression and be able to interact without wrecking the harmony of the rest. The choreographer, Massine, was a great help to me; he understood my notion perfectly.”

The feathers on the Matisse-designed Nightingale costume for Tamara Karsavina moulted off on opening night!

Unfortunately for Matisse, “the dressmakers said that they couldn’t understand his sketches,” according to John Russell’s Matisse: Father & Son. “Tamara Karsavina, who had the role of the live Nightingale (as opposed to the mechanical one), said that on the first night the feathers moulted off her costume.”

Markova in her pure white Nightingale costume by Matisse

Though it looked sumptuous, the 1920 ballet was a flop. But four years later, the perennially broke Diaghilev decided Matisse’s designs were too beautiful to waste. All-new choreography was in order, and it was to be the first major effort from an untried 20-year-old talent – George Balanchine. Karsavina was replaced by the 14-year-old Alicia Markova, the youngest ever soloist at the company, with Matisse asked to create her new costume.

While Markova was dreamily picturing a brown feathered bird tutu, Matisse had other ideas. Uncharacteristic for the King of the Fauves, he dressed Markova in an all-white unitard head-to-toe with white osprey feathers covering a close-cropped bonnet. (For more on that amusing costume story, see my former post Alicia In Wonderland.) Balanchine’s Nightingale – with daring choreography for the young dance prodigy Markova – was a hit. Remarkably, Matisse would once again clothe Markova in a white unitard for Rouge et Noir some fifteen years later.

Matisse’s oil, The Ballet Dancer, 1927

When one thinks of artists and the ballet, Degas instantly comes to mind for his paintings and pastels, and perhaps Picasso for his set and costume designs. But during the time Matisse worked with Markova on The Nightingale, he too fell under the spell of ballet, producing a series of ballerina drawings called “Ten Dancers,” as well as several luscious Ballet Dancer oils.

However, Matisse had always been fascinated by the movement of dance, which he celebrated throughout his career in some of his most superb large scale works.

Matisse’s magnificent La Danse, 1909

“For me, a color is a force,” he told Pierre Courthion. “My pictures are made up of four or five colors that collide with one another, and the collision gives a sense of energy.”

Matisse cut-out The Dance, 1938

From his early dynamic Fauvist paintings to his delightfully original cut-outs, Matisse taught colors how to dance.

Markova beautifully costumed in The Water Lily, 1935 (photo by Gordon Anthony).

Pity the poor ballet costume manager. While researching Markova’s biography, I was continually amazed at the painstaking, and enormously expensive, process of designing, constructing, and maintaining dance costumes for an entire company. Just one loose sequin falling on the stage can cause a dancer to slip and be seriously injured. And even in the grand Ballets Russes days, a single extravagant costume needed to be repeatedly altered to fit each prima ballerina performing the same starring role.

Then there’s the original design. As London’s V & A museum explains, “Dance costume is a highly specialised field and as well as having to reflect the overall concept of the work, body movement, the demands of the choreography of a particular work and the effects of different fabrics in motion all have to be taken into consideration.”

And what happens if those precious costumes somehow never make it to the dancers’ dressing rooms by curtain time? Simply put: no costumes, no show.

As a star performer with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Alicia Markova spent much of World War II criss-crossing the United States by train. The schedule was grueling, with the dancers often spending only one or two days in each city before moving on to the next venue.

And this went on for months.

Though they traveled with their scenery and costumes in a second railcar – quite a time-consuming project to pack and unpack at every stop – wartime needs sometimes intervened. As reported in the Arkansas Gazette in 1942: “Scheduled to give a performance at 8:30 P.M. at the Auditorium yesterday, the [Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo] troupe was unable to appear for the first time in 50 scheduled performances.

No costumes, no performance.

“Coming from Columbus, Missouri, scenery, props and wardrobes were sidetracked at Memphis to allow passage of troop trains. ‘Our performances have run late before due to delay of wardrobes, but we have never had to cancel a performance until now,’ Leon Spachner company manager said.'”

Though one would think modern air and overnight shipping would prevent such an event in today’s world, think again. As reported by the Chicago Reader this past February: “Costumes for one of the most anticipated offerings of the season, the internationally celebrated Hamburg Ballet, headed by onetime Chicagoan John Neumeier, were stuck on a storm-delayed freighter. They wouldn’t make it to [the Harris Theater in] Chicago in time for the performances.”

The Hamburg Ballet costumes for their signature Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler never made it to the theater.

Amazingly, “That crisis was resolved before the public heard about it, when the legendary Paris Opera Ballet, another recent visitor to the Harris and one of the few other companies with the piece in their repertoires, came to the rescue, shipping its own costumes to Chicago by air. The Harris popped for alterations, and everything was back on track.”

But the Hamburg Ballet was twice-cursed in the “Windy City.” During the pre-opening dress rehearsal, an electrical fire broke out in the theater forcing the dancers out into the cold, some wearing just ballet slippers and tights. The show never went on.

Modern dance pioneer Martha Graham performing against a Noguchi-designed set in 1944

“In what has proved to be a fateful decision,” The New Yorker reported at the time, “the company’s sets and costumes—including pieces like the white throne from ‘Clytemnestra’ (1958) and the cloth set for ‘El Penitente’ (1940), both by [Isamu] Noguchi, as well as the Karinska gown from ‘Episodes’ (1959)—were placed in a series of rooms in the basement.”

Storage area for the Martha Graham Company following Hurricane Sandy.

Everything was later found to be submerged under six feet of water.

A similar waterlogged fate, but under very different circumstances, befell another historic ballet design when Markova was dancing with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1939. From The Making of Markova:

André Derain’s exquisite sets and costumes for Michel Fokine’s L’Epreuve d’Amour were lost at sea.

Dubbed “the Riviera afloat,” the gargantuan S.S. Rex was too large to enter Cannes harbor, where the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo was to disembark. That necessitated smaller boats being sent out to ferry the dancers, costumes, and cumbersome sets to the dock. As luck would have it, the Italian ocean liner was running late for its final destination, Genoa, so the captain decided to hurry things along.

In their haste, remembered Markova sadly, the overzealous crew ended up dumping several crates overboard. One was filled with André Derain’s exquisite Chinoiserie costumes and sets for [Michel Fokine’s] L’Epreuve d’Amour. The dancers watched horrified as the packing cases sank into the Mediterranean Sea and were quickly washed away. The company was never able to perform the ballet again.

Markova had her own series of costume mishaps at the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. As the first British prima ballerina in a predominantly Russian company, she was considered an interloper who had no right to “usurp” starring roles that “rightfully” belonged to the Russian ballerinas. (Markova’s great lifelong friend Alexandra Danilova, also a prima ballerina at the company, was happily an exception.) Not only did Markova have to contend with jealous dancers, but the all-Russian contingent of costume designers and seamstresses also had it in for her.

The first costume debacle occurred on opening night of Léonide Massine’s glorious Seventh Symphony in 1938. Markova starred as the “Spirit of the Air and Sky,” with a lighter-than-air costume designed by French artist Christian Bérard. Topping an all-over white silk leotard was a sky blue silk chiffon skirt appliquéd with almost imperceptible horsehair pale pink clouds. A larger cloud was to be appliquéd across Markova’s breast and one shoulder, leading up to a delicate winged hair ornament.

Bérard to the rescue.

On opening night, the Russian couturière Barbara Karinska (whose famous Martha Graham gown was destroyed in the above-mentioned flood) waited until the last minute to deliver Markova’s costume – or half a costume as it turned out. The ethereal skirt was finished but had no top or headpiece. Whether it was out of spite or poor planning, the result was the same. Markova couldn’t go on. Fortunately, the wildly creative Bérard came to the rescue. Rushing to Markova’s dressing room, he spotted a pale blue chiffon gown she had planned to wear to the after-party. Grabbing its matching scarf, the designer quickly draped and stitched the material into a top. Next he took a pair of scissors and cut wings from a piece of white paper, decorating them with black eyebrow pencil from the dressing table. The makeshift headpiece was fastened to her hair as Markova rushed on stage. The ballet was a triumph!

An unhappy pas de deux: egotistical Russian Serge Lifar had it in for the British Markova in Giselle (1938).

Markova’s next costume calamity was decidedly premeditated sabotage. Following her great success in Seventh Symphony, she was to star in the company’s debut performance of Giselle in London. It was Markova’s most acclaimed role to be danced in her hometown – sure to be a sellout.

But her partner was the egotistical Russian star Serge Lifar, who bizarrely re-choreographed the ballet to greatly expand his own role, that of Prince Albrecht. (A joke went around Paris that his Giselle should be renamed Albrecht!) Lifar wanted to dance London’s opening night with his fellow Russian, the beautiful Tamara Toumanova, a less fragile, curvier ballerina than the tiny Markova. The two Russian dancers were incensed that Toumanova had to play second fiddle to Markova. So too were the Russian seamstresses.

With constant costume sabotage, Markova kept a back-up Giselle costume under lock & key, like this one from 1934.

Quite nervous that her new costume wasn’t ready for the full dress rehearsal, Markova was nevertheless assured it would be in her dressing room opening night. When it finally arrived just a few minutes before curtain, lo and behold, the dress was way too big, having been “accidentally” made to fit Toumanova’s measurements. While this is a long and very entertaining story in all its detail (yes, you’ll have to buy The Making of Markova to find out!), Markova outfoxed everyone by bringing one of her old Giselle costumes to the theater as back-up. Lifar exploded, there were tears and screaming, but the show eventually went on.

Despite such a ruckus, Markova received an astounding 24 curtain calls, but Lifar refused to let her take any center stage bows without him. He was not only booed by the audience, but had to be physically restrained in the wings by stagehands to appease the Markova-loving crowd. This led to a major donnybrook – death threats, fisticuffs, and even a proprosed duel! – when Markova debuted the same role with Lifar at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. For more on that story, see my former post “Dirty Work Afoot: Treachery at the Ballet.”

Markova continued to experience costume sabotage with the company: an Act II costume slashed while she was on stage in Act I, packing needles hidden in her tutus, and other nefarious plots to physically harm or unnerve her – all to no avail. She would become the most famous, widely traveled, and highest paid classical ballerina of her generation.

The “winged” Markova in Les Elfes. (photo, Gordon Anthony)

One of my favorite “costume” stories took place in 1934, the year Markova made her London debut in Giselle. From The Making of Markova: . . . even people who had never been to the ballet now knew the name of Markova. One evening, a taxi driver escorted the ballerina, her flowers, and costume/makeup cases home from the theater. As the driver helped unload all her belongings, he suddenly called, “Ere, Miss, you’ve left your wings in the cab.” “My wings?” Markova asked.

The driver pointed to a single remaining case. ”They tell me you’re the dancer with the invisible wings, so I suppose you take ‘em round with you.”

Markova did indeed appear to effortlessly fly on stage, sometimes even letting her “wings” show, as when costumed for Les Elfes or Les Sylphides, one of her most celebrated roles. A pair she wore in 1926 as a sylph at Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes is carefully preserved for posterity in The Australian Ballet Collection.

From a shy dance prodigy at Diaghilev’s famed Ballets Russes, Markova would become the most independent prima ballerina of her generation.

Brand new year – brand new you, tout January advice columns. But while “you are your own brand” is a decades-old business mantra, it’s a relatively new phenomenon in the high-culture world of ballet.

Natalia Osipova astounds with her jumps – both in the air and from ballet company to company

Call them footloose and fancy-free agents – a new generation of ballet talents who maintain “jeté setting careers,” according to a New York Times article by Roslyn Sulcas and Michael Cooper. “A wave of international ballet stars are increasingly leaping from company to company, creating their own brands and becoming more like world-traveling conductors and opera stars. In doing so, they are upending ballet’s traditional professional path and changing an art form long defined by national styles that dancers perfected as they grew up with — and stayed loyal to — a single company.”

But “upending ballet’s traditional professional path” is not a new phenomenon. Over 70 years ago, Alicia Markova startled peers by becoming the first, and only freelance prima ballerina of her generation. As the London News Chronicle reported in 1955, Markova “is to dance what Menuhin is to music, but unlike the violinist, she has no competitors in her field, for all the other leading ballerinas, from Fonteyn to Ulanova, work in the framework of established companies. Indeed, it seems as though Markova may be the last of her kind – the ‘rebel’ dancer who is prepared to carry the full responsibility for her career on her own delicate shoulders.”

David Hallberg and Polina Seminova dance for more than one company. The New York Times calls them “Ballet Brands.” (photo: Andrea Mohin)

Not only was Markova’s declaration of independence far ahead of her time, but her motivations were equally remarkable, and quite different from today’s “rebels.” As celebrated dancer Alina Cojocaru told the Times, “Ballet careers are relatively short and require years of training that pose the risk of injury, yet the world’s top dancers earn far less money than their counterparts elsewhere in show business. Belonging to two companies or making numerous guest appearances increases earning power.”

Paris Opera Ballet Director Benjamin Millepied (and husband of Black Swan star Natalie Portman) sniffs the air at YSL, and has made a television commercial for Air France.

Also increasing dancers’ earning power – not to mention name recognition – are advertising endorsements. More from the Times: “top-level dancers, thanks to social media and advertising contracts, are increasingly able to capitalize on their own brands. Ms. [Polina] Semionova recently appeared on billboards alongside the tennis star Novak Djokovic in a Uniqlo advertisement; Mr. [Benjamin] Millepied has appeared in advertisements for Dior and Saint Laurent; Yuan Yuan Tan, a principal dancer at San Francisco Ballet, is a brand ambassador for Van Cleef & Arpels and Rolex. ‘Why can’t a ballerina be as public as a tennis figure?’ asked Sara Mearns, a principal dancer with New York City Ballet.”

Why indeed? Appearing in a mainstream Gap ad introduced San Francisco Ballet dancer Yuan Yuan Tan to a whole new audience, potentially leading to higher ticket sales for her performances. But such tie-ins are not modern concepts. A century ago, the legendary Anna Pavlova happily endorsed Ponds Vanishing Cream for a tidy sum: “I find it is very good for softening and whitening my skin,” she claimed.

But Markova topped them all as an international brand magnet for a wide variety of products. Hers was a household name around the globe, and advertisers continually came calling to borrow a cup of the ballerina’s fame.

As New York Herald Tribune columnist Art Buchwald wrote in 1953, “Miss Markova, considered by many as the greatest living ballerina, and by others as the greatest ballerina who ever lived, flew to Paris to appear in six ballets . . . Because of her fame, experience, and talent, she is one of the few ballerinas in the world who can free-lance, go where she wishes, do what she wants and demand the salary she believes she justly deserves.”

Markova on tour in South Africa

Though she became the highest paid ballet dancer of her time, a pile of money was not Markova’s objective. “We come from a family of inventors and pioneers and this spirit seems embodied in Markova,” wrote the ballerina’s sister and frequent business manager Doris Barry. “As often when she could accept a lucrative engagement in London or New York, an offer comes from a new national company struggling to establish itself, and though she knows it means physical discomfort from climate, hotels, etc., we find ourselves in a plane and my sister turns to me and says, ‘Well, here we go again – another new country to conquer.'”

Markova’s image enhanced sales of a 1958 Paris orchestra concert album of Les Sylphides, one of her more famous roles.

Markova was an egalitarian. She thought ballet should be for everyone everywhere, no matter where they lived or how much money they made. She used her sizable earnings not to buy a country home or luxury residence – she lived with her sisters in a rent-controlled flat in London! – but rather to subsidize her far-flung travels and charity work. When the Royal Winnipeg Ballet asked Markova for help raising funds for their deeply in debt company in 1954, she didn’t hesitate. RWB member Betty Farrally fondly recalled that Markova “took time to teach and coach the dancers, and when the costumes for Les Sylphides failed to meet with her approval, she dug into her own pocket and paid for new top layers.”

Cadbury came calling after discovering Markova’s addiction to chocolates

Though Markova was called the “spirit of the air” by dance critics, it was her down-to-earth interviews that endeared her to the public. So while she was often photographed wearing couture fashions and jewels for style magazines, it was mainstream, rather than luxury, advertisers that sought her endorsement. (Markova’s romance with the dashing Van Cleef & Arpels scion Louis Arpels being a different sort of endorsement entirely.) As early as the 1930s, Markova was approached by a popular chocolatier: “Cadbury chocolates keep you on your toes!” says famous ballerina.

An apple a day, or perhaps a potato? (Photo by Dorothy Wilding, 1955)

Even more amusing was Markova’s serving as an unpaid spokesperson for England’s “Potato Council.” That’s right – potatoes! It seems the ailing British agricultural industry was desperately in need of a boost when Markova revealed to a London newspaper that she ate a steak and potatoes after every performance to get her energy back. A lightbulb went off in “spudville,” and a new impresario was born: Potato Pete, a jovial cartoon drawing that “presented” an elegantly dressed Markova in a promotional brochure offering up her favorite potato recipes.

Markova’s exceptionally beautiful hands and feet starred in two different ads, one glamorous, one not so much.“Whose hands are these?” inquired La Cross fine nail polish. Markova “was talented to her fingertips,” came the playful answer.

A similar question was posed by Morlands footwear, with the headline “Whose famous feet are these?” But Morlands didn’t design fragile glass slippers – just practical sheepskin-lined boots. The copy began, “In my walk or should I say dance of life,” says Alicia Markova, “a cold can spread calamity,” going on to extoll Markova’s sensible approach to winter footwear. A writer for World’s Press News wrote of the ad: “Testimonial advertising has never been my cup of tea. But this ad does it so cleverly, that I think my next slippers will be from Morlands.”

But perhaps the best use of Markova’s name and passion was in an ad for Basildon Bond stationery. “I chose the ‘Bunch of Amateurs,'” says Alicia Markova, read the headline. The body copy continued: “In the autumn of 1931, my life was at a crossroads,” says Alicia Markova. “I could either go to join Massine in his world-famous Ballet Russe De Monte Carlo, or I could join Ninette de Valois as Prima Ballerina at Sadler’s Wells in the embryo Vic-Wells Ballet. Superficially Massine’s was the more attractive offer, but I wanted to prove that ballet could succeed in Britain, so, after much thought, I wrote to accept Ninette de Valois. Some of my friends laughed at me for joining, as they put it, ‘a bunch of amateurs in the suburbs.’ But the laugh was on them. That ‘bunch’ put British ballet on the map and became eventually the brilliantly successful Royal Ballet, renowned throughout the world.” You never know which of your letters may turn out to be important, Basildon Bond concluded.

A Markova-themed Los Angeles Times crossword

Markova in the “50 of the Greatest Britons” commemorative card set

The range of brands asking to be associated with Markova was mind-boggling – everyone from Reader’s Digest and El Al Airlines to Farnsworth Television and Craven ‘A’ cigarettes (though the health-conscious ballerina never smoked). Before the internet and social media, it’s hard to imagine the worldwide recognition of Markova’s name. Her image was featured on postcards, in crossword puzzles, and as one of Brooke Bond Tea’s collectible “50 of the Greatest Britons” picture cards (alongside the likes of Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Florence Nightingale, and George Bernard Shaw).

Markova and sister Doris crossing the Atlantic by ship

A frequent trans-Atlantic ship traveler, Markova soon found her photo on the Royal Mail Lines menu. She was clearly an appetizing entree.

And Markova’s fame was hard-earned. Unlike all her movie star friends – from dancers Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, to fellow Brits Charlie Chaplin, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh – Markova didn’t appear in films that reached millions of viewers internationally. The prima ballerina personally traveled the globe performing to sold-out crowds in a startling number of countries, an impossible feat had she not chosen to self-manage her career.

Critics went wild for the pairing of Markova and Erik Bruhn in Giselle (1955). Markova was 44, Bruhn, 26

“It is usually believed that guest ballerinas invited to appear with major companies have an easy time in comparison with the day after day performances of the regular stars of those companies,” reported Dance News in 1955. “But just take a look at Alicia Markova’s schedule for the next two months and see what she has lined up for herself.” The list included a BBC production of Giselle in London with the 18-years-younger Danish star Erik Bruhn, partnering with Bruhn again in Copenhagen for the Royal Danish Ballet, performances at Stockholm’s Royal Opera House, a gala opening of the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas in Paris, and the opera season in Chicago. For that same time period, she had to turn down offers from Helsinki, Amsterdam and Brussels, but made sure to attend the annual children’s hospitals charity ball in Deauville, performing with friends Gene Kelly and Maurice Chevalier.

The Markova comic book: a ballerina superhero for the next generation of bunheads

Markova was a much loved and revered brand if ever there was one, but her most cherished fans were too young to understand the concept. They were all the ballet students who took lessons with a photo of the great Markova up on the wall for inspiration. Perhaps a few of those bunheads owned the comic book at left, illustrating Markova’s trials and tribulations on the way to becoming a ballet superstar.

Even without a cape, Alicia Markova could leap tall buildings with a single bound!

Seventy-two years ago today the Japanese bombed the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii. Over 2,400 people were killed – sailors, soldiers, civilians – and nearly 1,200 wounded. Within an instant, the United States was at war. At the very moment Pearl Harbor was under attack, prima ballerina Alicia Markova was in New York City dancing a sold-out matinee performance of Giselle. The audience would hear the horrific news at intermission. When they silently returned to their seats for Act II, the poignancy of Markova’s performance brought a flood of cathartic tears.

The British dancer would spend the next three years supporting the American war effort in every way she could: raising money and donations, entertaining the troops, and offering a brief escape from the world’s worries. “Little 96-pound Alicia Markova, who admits her heart is tangled up with an Englishman now making uniforms for the R.A.F., thinks the ballet has a definite war mission,” revealed a Philadelphia newspaper. “‘Escape,’ she says . . . ‘and it’s good in time of war.'”

Markova was under contract to Sol Hurok during the war years.

When the U.S. entered World War II on December 7th, 1941, Markova’s homeland of Great Britain had been under siege for over two years. She had wished to remain in London to be with her family and loved ones, but was contractually obligated to dance in the United States with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Impresario Sol Hurok threatened legal action to prevent her from performing anywhere if she refused to go. As Markova was supporting her widowed mother and sisters, she had no choice.

Upsetting war news from home was inescapable.

Though dancing in the U.S. brought solace to the celebrated ballerina, worries about her family and friends were omnipresent. “Mr. Massine [artistic director Léonide Massine] won’t allow newspapers in the studio,” Markova told a newspaper reporter in 1940. “And a good thing, too. I was trying to take my mind off what I had read at breakfast one morning. Suddenly one of the corps de ballet opened a paper. ‘London Bombed!’ I felt quite sick. I forgot my entrance and things got pretty blue. . . . The knowledge that your country is at war, that your family is in it, is always with you. While working you can get away from it for a few moments.”

The news only got worse, as Markova told another interviewer in January 1941: “I picked up the newspapers the morning after my New York debut in ‘The Nutcracker.’ In one hand I held the most wonderful compliments from the critics – and in the other, a cable from my mother, telling how a bomb had gone through our apartment. Fortunately,” went on the soft-voiced star of the ballet, “my mother and three sisters were away at the time.”

Markova volunteered at Stage Door Canteens throughout the country.

Throughout the war, wherever she was performing, Markova made time to visit Stage Door Canteens across the country. The lively nightspots offered wholesome evenings out for enlisted men and women (no officers!), with free food and the company of cheerful volunteers. Some were rather famous, especially at the Hollywood Canteen founded by actors Bette Davis and John Garfield. (“No liquor, but damned good anyway,” reported one sailor.) Markova had a fine time socializing with the American G.I.s: pouring coffee, chatting amiably, and tripping the light fantastic. The ballerina taught ballroom dancing to the servicemen and they in turn showed her how to jitterbug.

To entertain G.I.s, Markova jitterbugged with Mickey Rooney. (Photo from The Hollywood Canteen, an entertaining book by Lisa Mitchell & Bruce Torrence.)

Markova became so adept that one night she entertained the troops by jitterbugging with film star Mickey Rooney; but an over zealous G.I. named “Killer Joe” almost did her in with his exuberant dance moves. Markova loved it all, and so did the countless grateful soldiers who sent her thank you letters and requests for photos. The bone-thin ballerina couldn’t believe anyone would consider her “pin-up girl” material! But Markova managed to touch the soldiers’ lives in a very different way than Hollywood glamour girls like Rita Hayworth.

Performing for departing or wounded soldiers, Markova’s magical stage presence was an unforgettable experience that lived long in one’s memory. Headlines in many newspapers spoke of her power to enthrall servicemen with classical dance: “Ballet Their Escape From War Jitters,” read one; “Ballet Hailed as War Outlet” read another. And Markova always made time to sell war bonds while on tour, once even appearing on the radio in the window of I. Magnin’s department store.

Markova photographed by friend Carl Van Vechten

Markova also supported the women that the soldiers left behind. From The Making of Markova: She was willing and able to put herself in the place of average American women whose lives had changed drastically after the Untied States entered the war. Not only were their loved ones drafted, but in a way, they were too. Women who had never held jobs in their lives were needed as factory workers and fill-in employees for all the men now overseas. Many were scared, tired, and feeling neglected. Markova was a Jewish woman at a time when her religion had horrific consequences. She knew what it was like to feel insecure and afraid. And that attitude won her many female fans.

Her interviews were filled with practical beauty and health tips to make women feel better in those tough times. It was hard to feel attractive while doing factory work. Markova knew how happy her sisters were to receive her care packages of lipsticks and nail polish, which they were unable to get in war-torn England. And Markova always reserved some of her war rations for friends back home, sending weekly food packages and much-needed supplies. Thanks to Markova’s parcels of metal hairpins and ribbons, the corps members at London’s Sadler’s Wells Ballet (today’s Royal Ballet) were able to remain”bunheads!”

Markova dressed simply for press photos during the War. American women loved her for it.

Markova also understood that times of war required restraint in appearance. “Miss Markova is not, she insists, a glamour girl,” reported the New York World-Telegram. “She’s a simple, quiet English girl who happens to be a good dancer. Her press agents have asked her to dress more snakily, let down her hair and throw off her natural reticence. But Miss Markova insists that being herself and a good dancer into the bargain is ‘Quite Enough.'”

The trend-setting Markova in 1941

The quietly chic dancer still managed to set fashion trends. Out to dinner in 1941 with friends from the Ballet Theatre (today’s American Ballet Theatre), Markova was photographed wearing a beret and fitted houndstooth suit with padded shoulders, nipped in waist, and knee-grazing hemline.

Lauren Bacall in the same outfit three years later in To Have and Have Not.

Three years later, 19-year-old Lauren Bacall would wear an almost identical outfit in her first film, To Have and Have Not. Though female movie-goers loved the fashions, far more memorable today is Bacall’s repartee with soon-to-be-husband Humphrey Bogart: “You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and… blow.”

Markova got her share of whistles too, accompanied by standing ovations at curtain calls across the country. The popularity of ballet actually increased during the war years, as famous American dance critic Edwin Denby explained: “Wartime, here as abroad, made everyone more eager for the civilized and peaceful excitement of ballet. More people could also afford tickets. And in wartime, the fact that no word was spoken on the stage was in itself a relief. Suddenly the theaters all over the country were packed.”

During the war years, Markova practically lived on trains.

In order to accommodate audiences nationwide, the company practically lived on trains. Outside of the big cities, performances were often one-night stands held in odd venues such as high school gymnasiums, American Legion auditoriums and Town Halls. As Markova recalled, “Just before we were leaving the Metropolitan (Opera House in New York), the list – the tour list – went up, and I remember looking at the list and I couldn’t understand it because for three whole weeks we never slept in a hotel.” Fortunately Markova was adept at sleeping on trains, and she laughingly remembered inventing “the Army Game” so the company could bathe. The wily “maneuver” involved taking advantage of hotel day rates while the stage crew unloaded and built sets. One dancer would check in to a single suite, with six more sneaking up afterwards. They would tip the maid to bring extra towels and take turns bathing, eating, and napping. It was like a Marx Brothers movie!

For the Ballet Theatre’s British contingent, mastering new choreography helped take their minds off war worries back home. Antony Tudor’s Romeo & Juliet co-starring Hugh Laing (with Tudor as Tybalt) was one of Markova’s most rewarding roles. Though 32 years old when the ballet debuted in 1943, she had no trouble embodying a love-struck girl of 14. In preparation, Markova memorized the entire Shakespeare play so she would have Juliet’s thoughts, words, and actions in her head as she danced.

Markova and Hugh Laing in Romeo & Juliet (Life Magazine)

“Her new Juliet,” wrote Edwin Denby in the New York Herald Tribune, “is extraordinary. One doesn’t think of it as Markova in a Tudor part; you see only Juliet. She is like no girl one has ever seen before. She is completely real. One doesn’t take one’s eyes off her, and one doesn’t forget a single move.” Added dance critic Grace Roberts, “For once, there was a Juliet who made Romeo’s quick reactions believable. Her light darting steps barely seemed to touch the ground . . . Markova’s deer like shyness in the first scene, her tragic controlled despair, her exquisite movement of her hand as she wakes up in the tomb scene, are all unforgettable in their subtlety.”

For the transported audience, it was indeed an escape from the worries of the world.

Alicia Markova had a career filled with firsts: the first British-born – and first Jewish – prima ballerina assoluta, the first to appear on television (in 1932!), the first self-managed “freelance” prima ballerina, and the first to appear on stage in just a leotard without a tutu – quite a scandal in 1925!

But one of Markova’s most charming firsts was introducing England and America to a now-ubiquitous holiday role: The Nutcracker’s Sugar Plum Fairy. In fact, Markova starred in the first-ever full-length Nutcracker outside of Russia, which was presented in London in 1934. As British dance historian and critic P.W. Manchester wrote,

Markova partnered with Stanley Judson in the first full-length Nutcracker outside of Russia. London, 1934

“To most of us, [Markova] was, is, and always will be the one and only Sugar Plum Fairy. She was brittle and sparkling, like the frosted icing on a Christmas cake. There was a crystalline purity in every movement, and she made the most beautiful adagio an unforgettable experience.”

In 1940, Markova would also become America’s first Sugar Plum Fairy, but more about that shortly. How Markova came to master the original 1892 choreography is quite a story in itself, and it begins with a man who would become infamous in Russian ballet circles: Nicholas Sergeyev (1876-1951).

Sergeyev joined the Imperial Ballet in 1894, two years after The Nutcracker (Casse Noisette) premiered at the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.

Tchaikovsky

Marius Petipa

Set to an enchanting score by Piotr Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker was a shared choreographic effort by the company’s Premier Maître de Ballet Marius Petipa, and his talented assistant Ballet Master Lev Ivanov (who took over when Petipa became ill). The ballet was not initially popular, falling far short of the success of the Petipa/Tchaikovsky classics The Sleeping Beautyand Swan Lake(the latter also with contributions by Ivanov), and Petipa’s magnificent reimagining of the French romantic ballet Giselle (Markova’s signature role).

Russian Imperial Ballet Master Nicholas Sergeyev

To preserve the choreography of all those time-honored works (and countless others), the Imperial Ballet undertook a 20-year documentation project painstakingly executed by a variety of ballet masters. Their detailed notations contained analysis and deconstruction of every step and movement in relation to the musical accompaniment. When finished, it was a virtual bible of Russian classical ballet. Sergeyev – first a dancer, then a soloist, and finally régisseur-général (chief stage manager) at the company – supervised the tail-end of the documentation. Due to his dictatorial manner, he was unpopular with the dancers, and later, the government. Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Sergeyev would be forced to flee his homeland – but not before spiriting away the bulk of the invaluable choreographic material.

Needless to say this scandalous theft did not sit well with the Imperial Ballet (later the Maryinsky), causing as much outrage in Russian cultural circles as London’s plundering of the Elgin Marbles elicited in Greece. (FYI: Renamed “The Sergeyev Collection,” the historical ballet papers are now housed in the Harvard University Theatre Collection.)

Markova, 1930s star of the Sadler’s Wells (today’s Royal Ballet)

While Sergeyev later found employment at Sergei Diaghilev’s grand Ballets Russes, by 1932 he was poor, unemployed, and living in exile in Paris. It was at this time that British balletomanes decided to form a homegrown company. Made aware of Sergeyev’s situation, they asked if he’d consider re-staging the famous Russian classics in London. Sergeyev happily complied and taught the original choreography of Giselle, The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake to the reigning star of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet (today’s Royal Ballet), Alicia Markova.

Nikolai Legat starred in the original Nutcracker in Russia, 1892

Markova’s Sugar Plum Fairy benefited from another master teacher as well: Nicholai Legat. The prolific choreographer and former Imperial Ballet dancer had starred in the Russian premiere of the Nutcracker in 1892. As he was living in London, Legat agreed to give Markova private lessons in mastering the extremely difficult original classical variations in the last act. “Some of us would call it a ‘killer’ under our breath,” Markova explained. “There are certain steps in that, which today are never done in the last movement, such as a double gargouillade.”

By 1939, Markova was a star ballerina with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and performing throughout Europe and the United States. The following year, Alexandra Fedorova (a former Maryinsky dancer and the sister-in-law of famed choreographer Michel Fokine) was asked to choreograph a shortened version of the Petipa/Ivanov Nutcracker for American audiences. The sets and costumes were designed by Alexandre Benois, a former Ballets Russes favorite living in France. As the 14-year-old Markova had been the youngest-ever soloist at the Ballets Russes, she greatly enjoyed the reunion.

Benois set for Nutcracker opening scene

The Nutcracker premiered at the Boston Opera House in the fall of 1940, with Markova mesmerizing audiences as the country’s first Sugar Plum Fairy. As Jack Anderson explained in his entertaining book The One and Only: The Ballet Russe De Monte Carlo: “… the Ballet Russe Nutcracker was a truncated version capable of serving as one item on a mixed bill. A brief first scene showed the Christmas party, after which Clara fell asleep and . . . journeyed immediately to the snow country and the land of sweets. Yet this was the first Nutcracker most American balletgoers had ever seen and it was extremely popular on tour.”

Markova starring in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo’s Nutcracker

Markova, age 43, dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy with the 25-year-old Milorad Miskovitch

While Markova’s Giselle was always a must-see night at the ballet, her Sugar Plum Fairy enchanted audiences throughout her entire lengthy career. In 1952, she performed the role for an audience of 30 million when she danced the snowflake scene on the hugely popular TV program Your Show of Shows, starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. And the Sugar Plum Fairy was part of her repertoire the following year, when the 43-year-old bewitched audiences throughout Great Britain and Ireland partnered with the sensational Milorad Miskovitch (18 years her junior!).

Ben Stevenson’s Nutcracker for the Houston Ballet (photo by Amitava-Sarkar)

In 1955, 18-year-old Ben Stevenson got the thrill of his young life performing scenes from The Nutcracker with Markova in London’s West End. After an illustrious dancing career in England (including stints at The English National Ballet and the Royal Ballet), Stevenson became a very successful choreographer and artistic director – a position he held at the Houston Ballet from 1976 to 2003. The talented Brit is credited with developing the small regional Texas troupe into an internationally acclaimed company. I had the pleasure of speaking at the wonderful Houston Ballet last week (thanks to the delightful Maxine Silberstein, Hilda Frank, and Chase Cobb) and meeting many of the marvelous dancers and students. This being November, the company is about to celebrate its 26th season performing Stevenson’s Nutcracker choreography, described in the press as “impeccably beautiful, alluring, and altogether magical from the opening to the close.”

Baryshnikov’s 1977 Nutcracker remains an annual viewing favorite

Growing up in New York, my introduction to TheNutcracker was George Balanchine’s sumptuous production for the New York City Ballet. First performed on February 2, 1954, this resplendent annual treat made me a ballet fan for life. (And Tina the Ballerina sounded so lovely when I was 5 years old.) As an adult, I felt the same magic while watching Mikhail Baryshnikov fly through the air in his own lauded Nutcracker for the American Ballet Theatre. Filmed in 1977, it is one of the mostly widely viewed Nutcrackers in the world.

Even today, The Nutcracker never ceases to enchant me. Living in Boston, I have the pleasure of attending the internationally acclaimed Boston Ballet. Last year, the company’s longtime Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen spearheaded an entirely re-designed, re-choreographed Nutcracker that simply dazzled with breathtaking new sets and glorious costumes by the award-winning designer Robert Perdziola. And like Markova’s very first Nutcracker in the United States, the company performs at the Boston Opera House. (O.K. – it’s a replacement for the original theatre, but why quibble?)

As a longtime art lover, I was continually fascinated by Markova’s friendships and working relationships with many of the most famous modern artists of her day. While my last post dealt with the enormously complicated construction of classical ballet costumes, Markova was also a star of avant-garde contemporary works, with costumes and sets as cutting-edge as the startling dance sequences. In addition to wearing costumes by Matisse and Chagall (as discussed in earlier posts), Markova was dressed by Giorgio de Chirico, Marie Laurencin, and Andre Derain, among other modernists.

Salvador Dali – the very definition of surreal

Salvador Dali was almost one of them, and here’s the amusing behind-the-scenes story.

The Spanish-born Dali (1904-1989) is so famous for his surrealist works that his name has become short-hand for the term. (Check out the fantastical food imaginings of Catalan chef Ferran Adria, which led to his nickname “Salvador Dali of the kitchen.” An exhibit of his edible art renderings is currently on view at Somerset House, London, coming next to the Boston Science Museum.)

Even 24 years after Dali’s death, a blockbuster retrospective of his work, first at the Pompidou Center in Paris and currently at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, has broken all previous attendance records. The artist who once famously said, “I don’t do drugs. I am drugs,” never lacked for attention alive or dead. So it’s only natural that Dali’s theatrical public persona would have given rise to commissions for theatrical set design.

Dali’s set for Massine’s Bacchanale (1939). The dancers emerged from the hole in the swan’s breast.

In 1939, the ever-inventive choreographer Léonide Massine hired Dali to design the set and costumes for his one act ballet Bacchanale, set to music by Richard Wagner. As Jack Anderson writes in The One and Only: The Ballet Russe De Monte Carlo, “The season’s scandal was Bacchanale . . . Dali’s decor was dominated by a huge swan with a hole in its breast through which dancers emerge, some in remarkable costumes.

As Dali’s Venus in Bacchanale, ballerina Nini Theilade appeared to be nude

“There was a woman with a rose-colored fish-head. Lola Montez wore harem trousers and a hoop skirt covered in teeth. The Knight of Death turned out to be an immense perambulating umbrella.. . . Prudish audiences blushed to behold the male ensemble with large red lobsters (as sex symbols) on their thighs, and Nini Theilade, portraying Venus, created a sensation because she seemed totally nude. In actuality, she wore flesh-colored tights from her neck to her toes.”

As Dali’s contribution to Bacchanale made the only lasting impression in Massine’s less-than-stellar work, it only added to the artist’s legend. As the egotistical Dali once said of himself, “There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.”

The always amusing Salvador Dali

But the great surprise in this tale is not that Massine continued to work with Dali, next on Labyrinth in 1941, but rather that the crazy Catalonian was hired by British choreographer Antony Tudor for his planned “intimate” new staging of Romeo & Juliet at Ballet Theatre (today’s American Ballet Theatre). Perhaps Tudor never heard Dali’s comment: “It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.”

One of Dali’s proposed “crutch-themed” set designs for Tudor’s Romeo & Juliet.

Alicia Markova was Tudor’s choice for Juliet and his choreographic muse. She laughingly remembered their meeting with Dali to view his proposed set designs. Crutches were everywhere to symbolize doomed love, but perhaps the most memorable suggestion was that the famous balcony be constructed as a giant set of false teeth (your sexual innuendo goes here) supported by gigantic sky-high crutches.

Though Markova always wondered what Dali had in mind for her Juliet (perhaps a leg cast?) it was the ballerina herself who inspired the eventual design theme executed by the Russian Surrealist (and Neo-Romantic) Eugene Berman. At Sergei Diaghilev’s urging, the teenaged Markova had spent hour upon hour at the Uffizi Museum in Florence studying Renaissance art. As I wrote in The Making of Markova: “The way the female figures in the paintings held their hands in repose, and the subtle tilt of their heads were poses Markova later incorporated into her own delicate dance movements.

To capture the innocence of youth, Markova, aged 32 when she played the teenaged Juliet, had a red wig made to resemble the Botticelli beauty above. The ballerina won rave reviews for her portrayal. But the attention didn’t stop there. The attendant publicity for the much praised ballet caught the eye of several couturiers who immediately turned Markova’s diaphanous, empire-waist gowns into the next season’s big fashion trend.

Dali-inspired shoe hat by Elsa Schiaparelli

Dali’s surrealist jewlery

Who knows what trends Dali’s Romeo & Juliet might have inspired? He collaborated with great friend and couturier Elsa Schiaparelli on her infamous shoe hat and lips-pocket suit seen here. And Dali’s own Surrealist jewelry designs – weeping eyes with clock-dial pupils and Mae West’s sexy smile in rubies and pearls – still fetch great sums at auction.

Think ballet is the most genteel of arts? Think again.

Throwing acid in the face of Bolshoi Ballet artistic director Sergei Filin may have been one of the most horrific examples of professional sabotage, but hot-blooded Russian dancers have a history of taking matters into their own hands when they don’t get their way. Broken glass hidden in toe shoes, needles stuck into tutus, dressing room costumes ripped to shreds between acts – ballet legend Alicia Markova experienced it all.

As I wrote in my biography The Making of Markova, “Intrigues, jealousies, death threats – even a proposed duel! This wasn’t ballet, it was a Wagnerian opera, and Markova was cast as the doomed heroine.”

That tale begins in 1938 when England’s most celebrated classical dancer – Alicia Markova – joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The resident Russian contingent – beautiful young ballerina Tamara Toumanova, egotistical male lead dancer Serge Lifar, and their loyal company seamstresses – was incensed at the British interloper being given star status. Never mind that Markova had begun her career at Sergei Diaghilev’s famed Ballets Russes in 1924.

Though the sabotage began on a small scale – the top of Markova’s tutu went missing just before curtain, her costume was “mistakenly” tailored to Toumanova’s measurements so she had nothing to wear on stage, etc. – it escalated when Serge Lifar “accidentally” dropped Markova during a performance and turned her ankle. Given that it happened after she had received 24 curtain calls and he was booed for not allowing her to take the spotlight alone was likely not a coincidence. Lifar was known for overacting on stage as well as off (see photo below).

Serge Lifar, Giselle 1942

Things really got ugly when the company left Europe for New York where the theatre run was sold out in anticipation of the great Markova dancing Giselle in America for the first time.

Tamara Toumanova

Toumanova thought she should star on opening night. Lifar agreed. And so did Mama and Papa Toumanova – a stage mother for the ages married to an ex-military man – who accompanied their daughter on the trip.

Though impresario Sol Hurok liked a pretty face as much as the next person – and Toumanova was truly lovely (see photo) – she couldn’t hold a candle to Markova when it came to the emotionally complex role of Giselle. Hurok only saw dollar signs, and Markova was the big box office draw.

It was obvious things weren’t going well when Markova witnessed Papa Toumanova – incensed that Tamara wasn’t the company’s star – sucker-punching art director Léonide Massine and knocking him to the ground at rehearsal. Though the ex-military man was promptly banned from the theatre, things only got worse.

A few days later Markova was leaving the theatre when someone pressed a note into her hand and dashed off into the crowd. The note read: “DON’T DANCE TOMORROW NIGHT, OR . . . “

Everyone was in a tizzy; Markova was assigned a bodyguard; Markova wanted to back out; Sol Hurok begged her not to. Opening night finally arrived.

From The Making of Markova:

Taking no chances, Hurok set about securing the theatre, beginning with special identification badges issued to every Metropolitan Opera House employee – the first time that had ever been done. ‘A threat of possible violence caused me to take the precaution to have detectives, disguised as stage-hands standing by,’ Hurok added. ‘I eliminated the trap-door and understage elevator used in this production as Giselle’s grave, and gave instructions to have everything loose on the stage fastened down.’ It was like the first half of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Bu what would be the denouement? Hurok’s final order caused its own set of problems. Already shaken by the sight of security guards in the wings watching her every move – not to mention making her American premiere! – Markova found herself equally agitated while on stage. As she tells the story:

In Act II, Giselle has to pick two flowers from the ground row at the back of the stage during the pas de deux and toss them to Albrecht. It is beautifully timed musically: Giselle has to do a glissade, a temps levé and a run, plucking one lily and then the next. As I performed the step, I found the lilies had been nailed to the ground: battened down like everything else for security. They seemed immovable. The company later told me they had never seen anything like the way the ethereal spirit of Giselle gave one wrench and then another wrench, and tore the lilies from the ground with superhuman – perhaps supernatural – strength – and got back to centre stage in time to carry on. I sometimes wonder why I never developed an ulcer!

Markova, Act II Giselle

The above photo of Markova gracefully holding the lilies as Giselle will give you an idea of the ridiculousness of the above scene. Despite all the melodrama before and after her first American opening night, Markova brought the house down, with critics describing her in the press as “breathtaking,” “phenomenal” and “incomparable.”

Toumanova and Lifar were incensed.

At the next night’s performance of Giselle, Lifar seemed to lose his balance when lifting Markova, dropping her down so hard she fractured her foot. It was another “accident” of course. Next came the challenge to a duel in Central Park – but that’s a story for another day.